President Donald Trump had previously proposed raising to 21 the legal age for purchasing certain types of guns, including assault-style rifles like the one used in last month’s mass shooting in a Florida school. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

White House says still weighing age restrictions for some guns, after Trump signals he’s backing off

President Donald Trump has not closed the door on raising the age at which Americans are allowed to buy certain firearms, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted on Monday afternoon, hours after the president himself seemed to do just that, conceding that there is “not much political support” for such a move.

“Right now the president’s primary focus is on pushing through things that we know have broad bipartisan support or things that we can do from an administrative perspective that we can do immediately, but we haven’t let go of some of those other things that we’re going to continue to review and look at,” Sanders told reporters near the top of her Monday press briefing. She said Trump still supported raising the age limit for the purchase of certain guns, whether done at the federal level or on a state-by-state basis, but could not institute such a policy on his own.

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She grew increasingly frustrated as reporters continued to question her about the president’s apparent backtrack on positions he had previously expressed support for, especially when one questioner referenced the president’s position on raising the legal purchase age for certain firearms relative to his 2016 campaign rhetoric — that he alone was capable of fixing the flaws he said existed in the federal government.

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“That’s not actually what I said, but you guys continue to misunderstand and misrepresent the comments that I’m making,” Sanders said when a reporter suggested Trump had abandoned his “I alone can fix it” campaign rhetoric. “I’m saying that the president is pushing forward on things that we know have broad-base support and that we can immediately get done, while at the same time we’re looking at the best way forward to push these other things through, whether it’s on a state level, whether it’s on a federal level.”

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Trump had previously proposed raising to 21 the legal age for purchasing certain types of guns, including assault-style rifles like the one used in last month’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The president’s proposal was met with pushback from the NRA and was left off of a list of recommendations to stop school shootings released on Sunday by the White House. On Monday, the White House released a list of the president’s policy proposals relative to the Parkland shooting that included “age restrictions for certain firearm purchases” among the topics to be researched by a federal commission on school safety chaired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“On 18 to 21 Age Limits, watching court cases and rulings before acting,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday morning. “States are making this decision. Things are moving rapidly on this, but not much political support (to put it mildly).”

Before conceding on raising the age limit for the purchase of certain guns, Trump had publicly chided members of his own party, telling GOP lawmakers at a White House meeting that they were “afraid of the NRA.”

In an earlier tweet, the president touted other steps that his administration still intends to pursue, including “very strong improvement and strengthening of background checks” and the banning of bump stocks, devices used last year by a mass shooter in Las Vegas that allow a semiautomatic weapon to function essentially as an automatic one. “Highly trained expert teachers will be allowed to conceal carry, subject to state law,” the president said, a step that he has argued will harden schools against shooters and deter attacks.

Later on Monday morning, the president tweeted that gun-free zones were an “invitation” for “violence and danger.”

While Trump has backed away from his support for raising the age at which certain guns can be purchased to 21, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida signed legislation earlier this month doing just that, as well as banning bump stocks, funding mental health programs in schools and instituting a three-day waiting period for the purchase of firearms. The bill, which has prompted the NRA to sue the state of Florida in order to block its implementation, also allows willing teachers to carry firearms inside schools.